Get Out of My House - A Short Story by Ziad Khadash- Translated by Raph Cormack 2021 - Included in The Book of Ramallah- A City in Short Fiction- edited and introduced by Maya Abu Al-Hayat

 The City of Ramallah, population about 70,000, is located in the West Bank area of Palestine, has become a focal point of world wide media  This Anthology was published prior to the initiation of the current conflict. In the very informative elegant introduction Maya Abu Al-Hayat tells us the literary history of the city going back to the 16th century up to 2021. She has selected a quite diverse range of stories but each one is informed by the impact of violence brought upon the residents of Ramallah by contacf with Isrealis.

‘Get Out of my House’, tells of a man who comes home to find a strange woman in his house who is adamant that it’s her house and that he has to leave before her husband returns. Here we glimpse the ephemeral life of the refugee, returning from his home in the camp, leaving his library behind to be ruined by soldiers going through his stuff, and living alone in a city he doesn’t belong where he has to continually prove his identity or his innocence.

There are numerous ways of trying to escape mentally from a Chaotic dangerous environment over which you have little control. In this story we see how this attempt can destroy mental health 

Ziad Khadash is a Palestinian writer. He was born in 1964 in the village of Beit Nabala, and lives in the Jalazoun refugee camp near Ramallah. Khadash holds a BA in Arabic literature from the University of Jordan and works as a creative writing teacher in schools in Ramallah. He is author of 12 short story collections, the most recent of which was Overwhelmed by Laughter (House of Everything, Haifa). His story ‘Wonderful Reasons to Cry’ was shortlisted for the 2015 Kuwaiti Al-Multaqa Prize for the Short Story.

Mel Ulm